Alexandra Hotel Gig: Aimed for Older Adults (review, evaluation and problem-solving)

 The Alexandra Hotel Gig: 25/04/26

Review and Analysis

A key reason on why we played this gig was to focus on audience at a pub and how they react to music being presented in front of them, where the majority are adults in their 30s-50s, though there were some members of the audience a lot younger which I will be taking into account when discussing audience reaction as they reacted differently to the adults in the crowd, there was also a motive of spreading the band's wings and testing out songs with this being our first proper gig. This in general is just effective for creating future sets and finding what works and doesn't work. This gig is a third of my project and there are still 2 more to get through, though everything to come from this gig has given me several answers already.

Given that the main focus of this gig was audience reaction, interaction and engagement, those were what I tried to observe throughout our 2 sets, and listening in to the other artists playing on the same night.

What I noticed

A key thing I noticed from the audience in this gig was that the adults in the crowd preferred to sit or stand and simply watch the band playing, letting the music take them away, while the younger audience were more upfront and dancing to the music that played, they were a lot more engaging. It looked to me that despite the heavy promotion from the pub, most of the adults in the crowd didn't come for the music, but more came to socialise and get drunk, using this event as a great place to do so.

Another thing I had noticed was that audience reaction really depended on what songs were played and how they were played. I.e. some songs had a less active crowd while others had part of the crowd singing and dancing. A good example of this was when we covered Holiday versus when we played Mr Brightside which may be down to subjective music taste: the older majority and the younger majority all enjoyed Mr Brightside whereas less of the older crowd and more of the younger crowd enjoyed Holiday. More examples were Zombie, Creep and Sex On Fire. Despite going awfully wrong at the start, there were cheers from the crowd when Declan played the opening riff to Sex On Fire which did give me the realisation that a pub audience much prefer well known classics that you may hear on a karaoke every Saturday night over songs that are still known but not to a wide majority. Holiday isn't a niche song perse, but it doesn't hit a pub as much as a classic like Mr Brightside or Sex On Fire. 

I discovered from this gig that pubs never look for a perfect, completely professional gig unlike one you may see in a grassroots venue like The Polar Bear or even a large stage venue like Connexin Live. Pubs are simply a space where adults go out to drink and enjoy whatever noise is behind them, even if it sounds good or poor, there are just bonus points if you play a song that will get the place completely moving. I discovered this through the many mistakes we all made in this gig, it was by no means a perfect gig but everyone in the pub was still humble about the mistakes, cheering us on and enjoying the catchiness of each song and our stage presence, how much we looked like we were enjoying it, and our ability to play most of our mistakes off.

Perhaps some of this comes from how we structured our setlist with the second half of our set being a lot more active than our first set, with the first 2 songs of the set barely showing a reaction. This could be from the people in the event getting progressively drunk or just in general how the whole set was structured; where we had placed the well known crowd pleasers versus where we placed every other song which did end up working in our favour.

 

 A full viewpoint of the audience from my perspective when preparing for the 2nd half: younger crowd a lot more engaged with what is in front of them while the older crowd are paying less attention to the band setting up; this is a point I will keep in mind during our upcoming Polar Bear set.

 Here is a clip from Mr Brightside

Preparation for the gig: What problems arose? How did I work around them? How did I approach this gig?

Preparation

I have been documenting this gig in consistently updated diaries, and focusing on what this gig will consist of during my first 2 week of research which I have been documenting in my weekly logs. Preparation wise, we put together a huge list of around 30 songs and went through each song and decided whether it was playable from us or ambitious/not our type or style. We eventually narrowed this giant list to 20-21 songs which put together an hour and a half, exactly how long we needed for our full set. It looked as follows:

For a short while, this was our permanent setlist and we were happy, but we got closer to the gig and some of these songs (specifically the ones that I had put red dots next to, but Thunderstruck also applies) were either boring us, too ambitious or were just not gonna be there in time so they were replaced with a list of (what we considered) easier backup songs we had put together.

Attached here is the updated and what was our final setlist:

(blue line seperates 1st half and 2nd half)

There wasn't that much change with the set regarding order, though we completely scrapped Thunderstruck and replaced Ace of Spades, No More Tears, Everlong and You Give Love a Bad Name. Creep was set to be replaced but instead we kept it with a different vocalist to give Alfie a vocal break and show off different talent within the band as an audience loves variety, which was why we chose not to have 2 songs from Ozzy Osbourne and Bon Jovi.

We approached the gig knowing our parts and doing our homework the best we can, coming prepared and having an idea on what we would be doing each rehearsal.

Creep sung by Jess.

Problems faced: how were they tackled?

Without a doubt, our 2 biggest problems with this gig was rehearsal time, and issues with members learning the set we had created together despite seeming confident. We had about just over 2 months to put an hour and a half set together, while Declan only had just over 1 month, having recently joined Slate full time to replace our previous departing guitarist so polishing the set was a huge struggle, and finding the time to rehearse everything was also tricky with other bands or peers wanting to use the rehearsal spaces for their fmp. 

So how were they tackled? What did we do to go around these problems?

We had been able to share the rooms with other members and work with them regarding who takes what room. We practiced in 2 rooms being C7 and Rats. We would go into Rats when another band or peer wanted to use C7. While we preferred using C7, Rats was usually free for if others were using the main rehearsal space. 

Regarding the set being learnt, we ensured the band had clear communication with issues that may come up and we would adapt to it immediately, hence the setlist switch-up and other, simpler songs coming in (which did work in our favour as we did have a lot more fun playing the replacement songs). Alfie was the only member who struggled with the set regardless of the songs so I had given a method as we got closer to the gig to actually have lyrics in front of him when listening to the set instead of listening to the set on its own, and just break down each song lyrically; it was simple and a self-explanatory method that you would expect from anyone but previously he hadn't been doing that, so when he started to do this lyrical method, the drastic change was incredible.

However, there were a select few songs that Alfie struggled to remember lyrics for so we borrowed a music stand for lyrics with a pub being a much less professional setting, we were able to get away with using one and still provide a strong show.

So how did the gig unfold? + Evaluation

Was this gig perfect? Not at all! But did the band and audience have a great time? Absolutely. To me, a successful gig is a gig that doesn't necessarily sound great but as long as I can find myself enjoying it from a viewer and audience standpoint; I would much prefer seeing a band that doesn't sound great but can present themselves in a way that makes the whole performance fun than a band that has an incredible sound with zero stage presence. That sums up our performance. We may have made a few mistakes but we also presented ourselves so casually and welcoming to the audience with engagement left right and center.

Don't Stop Believin' is an example of a song that didn't sound perfect for me but was still enjoyed by the crowd and featured strong audience engagement.

There was a lot to take away from this gig and would like to work on for future gigs: specifically Alfie's pitch control, band timing as a whole and a strong mix and sound for the overall band. We didn't only have improvements to take from this gig though: we were invited to play a 2nd gig in the pub right next-door and the audience looked to have had an absolutely amazing time engaging with us and dancing which matters most to me as a performer.

Highlights

There were a few key highlights from this gig that I really enjoyed. As a whole, I really enjoyed how well the audience reacted. Coming into this gig, I had heard pubs were a really judgy atmosphere where if you sounded bad, they would tell you straight to your face or would walk out which would be the most embarassing thing for me as a performer. However, this was the most welcoming and enjoyable atmosphere I have played to, we got up close to the audience and they got up close to us and that felt really special. There wasn't a single person I could see frowning during the gig, it was smiles and dancing all around. 

Below are a few videos from this gig that I'm quite proud of.

I absolutely loved the audience in this gig and I would play in front of that same crowd over and over again if I could. They were humble about our mistakes and engaged with us so easily; we really controlled the crowd and that was my favourite part of this gig. 

An example of the audience being humble was during Sex on Fire which was initially scrapped on the day due to it sounding really really bad timing wise and the guitar being completely incorrect. However the 2nd half was going really well with the audience loving it, we were loving it and we were approaching the final song so we decided to put it back in on the day. Immediately it sounded terrible and we were all completely off time so we stopped and told the audience we were just gonna move on. The audience kept cheering though and encouraging us to try again which we did and, while it didn't sound good in the slightest in my opinion, they absolutely adored it and it was really motivating to see from a performer point of view and is just an example of how well audiences are the ones who carry the momentum in a gig.

Conclusion

I had a lot of fun in this gig overall and I found out a lot from how this generation of audience react to their music playing. An older, adult audience aren't big into mosh pits and dancing (though when they got drunk there were a few having fun and dancing which was to be expected and why we put our main crowd pleasers towards the end of the set) but they will silently enjoy the music and sing along if encouraged. Adults from that average generation (the average age for the crowd looked to be ranging from 30s to 60s) prefer songs that are well-known, songs they can have a singalong with the band or their friends. I predict the crucial difference between this and The Polar Bear is that the younger audience will prefer more niche which is something I will be experimenting with on one of my sets. I also predict there won't be too much of a difference between the audience from this gig and the audience for the folk club gig: both wanting well known songs for their time and both wanting songs that they can clap and sing to easily.

The only thing I can think of that could've made this gig better was putting a lot more time towards specific elements of the song rather than the sections of the song. For example, I think we should've put more time into tailoring the songs for Alfie's vocals such as changing the key to suit him better or finding a different song.